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Saturday, 25 March
Monster Institutions
17:30 hrs. Gerald Raunig. Technecologies. Milieus, Midstreams, Monsters
18:30 hrs. Florencio Cabello. Notions of Public in Collective Intelligence
19:30 hrs. Roberta Da Soller (S.a.L.E., Venice), Kelly Mulvaney (Transform-eiPCP, Berlin and Vienna) and Manuela Zechner (Barcelona). Moderated by: Raúl Sánchez Cedillo. European Cities, from Care and Shelter to Fear, War, and Debt
21:00 hrs. Debate with the session participantsParticipants:
Florencio Cabello has a PhD in Communication Studies and is a lecturer at the University of Málaga. His teaching and research focuses on ways of forming cooperatives inspired by the free software and culture movements, under the perspective of constructing a commons in communicative and cultural domains. He is coordinator of the Medialab-Prado project Traducciones del Laboratorio del Procomún (Translations of the Commons Laboratory).
Roberta Da Soller is an activist and member of the collective which operates S.a.L.E. Docks, an independent space of contemporary art and cultural practices in Venice which has been running since 2008. S.a.L.E. Docks programmes seminars, exhibitions, research projects, workshops and public actions that seek to create an environment in which art and culture are removed from the market value logic.
Kelly Mulvaney is an anthropologist, translator and activist. She is a member of eiPCP and the editorial board for transversal texts. Furthermore, she is a professor at the Faculty for Cultural Studies at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and actively participates in the networks of transnational anti-austerity movements in Europe.
Gerald Raunig is a philosopher and art theorist. He is a lecturer at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Zurich), and is co-editor of eiPCP and its online publication transversal text. His most recent publications include Producción cultural y prácticas instituyentes. Líneas de ruptura en la crítica institucional (2008), Mil máquinas. Breve filosofía de las máquinas como movimiento social (2008), Fabbriche del sapere, industrie della creatività (2012), and DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution (2016).
Raúl Sánchez Cedillo is a philosopher, activist and translator. He has collaborated with the Universidad Nómada and is currently a member of Fundación de los Comunes. He has also edited and translated theorists such as Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri, Felix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Yan Moulier-Boutang and Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello into Spanish, and some of his writings appear in the book Producción cultural y prácticas instituyentes. Líneas de ruptura en la crítica institucional (2008) and in the prefaces to different essays by Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno.
Manuela Zechner is a researcher and independent cultural worker. Her work revolves around migration, micropolitics, care and pedagogy, with an emphasis on social movements. She is the coordinator of Future Archive (Intermediae-Matadero, Madrid), the Project for Radical Collective Care Practices, alongside Julia Wieger and Bue Rübner Hansern, and the free radio programme Sounds of Movement (Radio Orange, Radio Helsinki and live streaming). She has also worked as a lecturer at the Queen Mary University of London. -
Sunday, 26 March
The Artist in the City-Brand
17:30 hrs. Rogelio López Cuenca. In the Genius City
This presentation will lead on to a workshop with the artist and Elo Vega.
18:30 hrs. Isabell Lorey. Precarization, Indebtedness, Giving Time
19:30 hrs. Debate with the session participantsParticipants:
Rogelio López Cuenca. Artist. A member of the former direct action collective Agustín Parejo School between 1982 and 1984, his work stands at the crossroads between visual poetry, archival research and public intervention, exploring the relationships between art, memory and ideology. Málaga/Guernica 951 (2017), Ciudad Picasso (2011), Malagana (2000) and Sobrevivir a Picasso (2012) are some of his projects under construction and centre on contemporary interpretations of Pablo Picasso. He has exhibited at the Museo Reina Sofía, IVAM, MACBA, MUSAC, CGAC and Artium, among other institutions.
Isabell Lorey is a professor of International Gender Politics in the Institute for Political Science at the University of Kassel. She has taught feminist and post-colonial theory at the University of Humboldt, Berlin, and at the Universities of Vienna and Basel, and is also a member of eiPCP and co-editor of its online publication transversal text. She conducts research into the precariousness of work and life in neoliberal society, social movements, democracy and representation. Her most recent publication is Estado de Inseguridad. Gobernar la Precariedad (2016).
Elo Vega is an artist and researcher. Her work addresses social, political and gender issues through art projects which are at once cultural critique devices and a political instrument. In recent years she has worked with the artist Rogelio López Cuenca in workshops and collective projects related to history, memory and monumentalization as an element of ideological control, for instance Gitanos de papel (Cultural Centre of Spain in Montevideo), Historia de dos ciudades/Saharawhy (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile), Efigies y fantasmas (Museo de Huelva) and Granada. Guía monumental (Centro José Guerrero).
Picasso in the Monster Institution
Art, the Culture Industry and the Right to the City
Held on 25 mar 2017
Picasso in the Monster Institution. Art, the Culture Industry and the Right to the City strives to create distance from the predominant sense of celebrations and large-scale cultural commemorations which, in understanding art as an attractive resource, place history and artistic experience inside a frame with exclusive ties to tourism and urban leisure. It also calls into question these logics and explores possible alternatives.
This seminar unfolds inside the context of Midstream, a European network of university and institutional research into new audiences and devices of cultural mediation, comprising eiPCP (the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies), Museo Reina Sofía, and the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, and seeks to reflect on and debate the role of culture and art in those social movements that vindicate uses of urban space outside a city model which looks towards art to strengthen tourist imaginaries, thus conditioning its institutions and reception.
The recognition of Picasso’s work is one of the best examples to analyse the contradictions and complexities of these logics. Today, the work of the artist from Málaga is broadly appreciated and disseminated, yet, equally, such a reception cements stereotypes associated with the heroic and fetichized idea of artistic avant-garde movements and their most unrelenting myths, for instance the originality, brilliance and autonomy of art. These values obscure one of the 20th century’s most complex bodies of work.
How can the contemporary city fight against this integration of art, and its audiences and institutions, in the service economy and recover the potential of one of the most challenging oeuvres from the avant-gardes in its historical scope? What are the devices and anomalous or “monstrous” institutions which are able to place the work in a space which is alien to this integration? The seminar sets out to reflect on these questions via two round-table discussions and a workshop on the monumental imagary of Picasso and the contemporary city, conducted by Rogelio López Cuenca and Elo Vega, which will begin at the close of the lectures and shall be expanded upon in the future. The first session will debate monstrous institutionalism’s modes of relationship, calling upon different European networks and spaces (S.a.L.E., Venice; Transform-eiPCP, Berlin and Vienna; and La Invisible, Málaga), and theorists specialised in testing mediation experiments with these instituent machines. The second analyses the relationship between art and gentrification through the uses and abuses of Picasso’s work, putting forward a model of artistic experience which eludes the so-called creative industries and economies.
Framework
Midstream. New Ways of Audience Development in Contemporary Art, inside the Creative Europe programme
Organised by
eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies), Museo Reina Sofía and La Invisible
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.